Page:Hutcheson Macaulay Posnett - Comparative Literature (1886).djvu/50

 If we are determined to lay down the dogma that Shakspere, or Dante, or any other poet wrote above space and time, above the social and physical conditions under which he lived, we really exclude historical propriety by a creed of literary inspiration which has been frequently asserted, if not believed in, with theological assurance. We imitate the criticism of the Arabs and make a literary Qurʾân out of our Shakspere or Dante. "Were we to examine the Qurʾân," says Baron de Slane, "by the rules of rhetoric and criticism as they are taught in Moslem schools, we should be obliged to acknowledge that it is the perfection of thought and precision—an inevitable result, as the Moslems drew their principles of rhetoric from this very book." Reasoning in circles can supply as good foundations for a literary as for a theological creed, and save both a good many historical troubles. Yet it is remarkable that, in spite of their anti-historical dogma, our subjective critics are always anxious to show not only that Shakspere's characters are, in Macaulay's phrase, "men and women," but that they are the men and the women of the particular time and place which the poet represents on his stage. In the Rome of Coriolanus appear English drums and doublets, coals and bowls, and the Devil, English "gentlemen," "testy magistrates" from the Puritan Corporation of London, "divines" and "bare heads in a congregation" (Cor. iii. 2), while the servants of an English household take the place of slaves; and in the streets and Forum "Hob and Dick" (Cor. ii. 3), and the London trades oust by the rights of a free bourgeoisie the slaves and freemen of the Eternal City. But is it not pedantry to be careful about these things? And if an English clock strikes in the Rome of Julius Cæsar, or rime is there spoken of, or a proper English